1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a mechanism for forming an aligned stack of plastic bags on a permanent wicket wire in a plastic bag machine having a rotary bag transfer mechanism and a wicketing conveyer.
2. Prior Art
It has been found desirable to produce counted stacks of open topped bags supported on U or staple shaped wires referred to as wickets. The bags retained on these wickets are commonly used in automatic bag loading equipment.
Numerous types of bag making machines intended to deposit the completed bags on upstanding pins are known, e.g. see U.S. Pat. No. 3,555,977 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,286,907. It is current practice, however, to utilize rotary transfer type wicketing devices to deposit bags on transfer wicket pins. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,555,977 wicket conveyers currently utilize a hollowed out or grooved wicket transfer pin. This hollowed pin enables the operator to insert the permanent wire wicket along side the pins and through the apertures in the bag lips to simultaneously remove the stack bags from the transfer wicket pins and place them on their permanent wire wicket. This removal operation is a fairly slow process, and, if the operator is not careful, can lead to disruption in the alignment of the stacked bags.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved wicket stacking station that will carry permanent wire wickets as well as transfer wicket pins, so that bag machine operators will not have to transfer stacks of counted and aligned bags from transfer wicket pins to permanent wire wickets. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a device that can be retrofitted to existing wicket conveyers to permit the stacking of sideweld plastic bags on permanent wickets, therefore avoiding the transfer of the completed stack of bags from the transfer wicket pins to permanent wickets.